A couple of years later I crossed into Mexico again, and this time my legal situation considerably improved. But that’s a story for another time…
Years ago, when I and my former partner in state-sanctioned cohabitation were planning a trip to Baja California, I must admit the prospect filled me with dread. I am a timorous, paranoid traveler and border crossings especially make me faint with anxiety. I understand that my fears are imaginary, but then, so are borders—after all, a border is just an invisible line defined by fearful men. Borders are merely belief systems, intangible constructs of civilization; they don’t exist but they can be located… and thus, they are real and the consequences for crossing them are certainly real—men are routinely killed when caught on the wrong side of a border.
to cross a border is to become a different person
Borders are settled arguments; a border is the line drawn between schools of thought. To cross a border is to become a different person; for humans too are constructs of civilization. On one side of a border I may be law abiding, on the other, a criminal. By one country’s standards I may be moral, while next door I am a disgusting pervert. In pre-Civil War America, a man who crossed the Mason-Dixon line might be transformed from slave to freeman or vice-versa.
Of course, it is not the man who changes; it is the standards by which he is judged. But standards don’t cross borders as readily as men, and men are defined by standards. Thus, men are defined by the borders they keep. It may be that without borders we are barely human; without dividing lines we can’t identify a separate self and without a separate self we can’t be self aware.
A preoccupation with boundaries appears in humanity’s oldest documents; the oldest maps are nearly 6,000 years old and Hammurabi’s Code, Egyptian picture writing, and sections of the Torah all discuss boundaries, corner monuments and land surveying—if it is boundaries that make us human, then land surveying may be humanity’s oldest profession.
When I worked as a land surveyor, I spent as much time in the courthouse as I did in the field. Without courthouses, deeds and maps don’t exist and without deeds and maps, boundaries don’t exist. So boundaries depend on a stable civilization, but of course civilizations depend on stable boundaries. The two are intimately entwined, partners in a dance that lasts for millennia. The maintenance of borders is a priority of nations.
We humans have covered the globe with a network of invisible lines, dividing us each from each. National borders divide continents, nations are divided into states, states are broken up by county and the division continues on down to my four acres, or even my side of the bed. Goddess help us all, we confine ourselves in jail cells that have no walls and live within lines that can’t be seen. And meanwhile, overhead, the wild geese fly from one land to another, crossing a hundred thousand boundaries without ruffling a feather.
Clearly I worry too much; the Mexican border I ended up crossing without incident is just an imaginary line and so far as I know I am perfectly acceptable on either side of it. I suppose the real border is in my mind, built of fear and, as always, the real journey is inward. But I confess, as I approached that line, a part of me was wondering why humans can’t travel as freely as wild geese.
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